Vietnam Loses $765.55M from Natural Disasters Annually

Natural disasters claimed 496 Vietnamese lives and caused a loss of around VND16 trillion ($765.55 million) annually in recent five years, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said in a report on Oct 20.
Natural calamities have been causing huge impacts on the country’s economic development in recent years, including losses of aquaculture, food production and damages of infrastructure facilities. Vietnam is one out of the ten most vulnerable countries by natural disasters, particularly tropical storms, floods, landslides and droughts. It is estimated to suffer ten storms a year, experts said. Natural calamities also left 125 dead and missing, injured 145 others while damaged over 700 houses and submerged 28,000 hectares of rice and other crops, causing a total damage of VND4.3 trillion in the first nine months of this year. The recent floods in the Mekong Delta region claimed 49 lives as of Oct 20. More than 88,188 houses, 22,700ha of paddy fields and thousands of kilometers of dykes are under water. The recent floods in the Mekong Delta provinces are among the worst since 1927, Nguyen Minh Giam, deputy head of the Southern Regional Hydro-meteorological Center, said, adding that narrowed acreage of upstream forests has made the floods more severe and unpredicted. (baodientu.chinhphu.vn Oct 20)